The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga (2 page)

Balear seethed, sending drops of water
cascading off him.

“
Something the matter,
Balear?” Iren could barely restrain his laughter. Balear was
perhaps the most stuck-up of all Haldessa’s residents. His
short-cropped blonde hair and black uniform were always immaculate.
It must be killing him to have a Left get the better of him,
especially one wearing discarded jester’s motley and with unkempt
tan hair that hung loosely around his shoulders. “Here,” Iren
offered with mock sincerity, “let me help you back down the
stairs.”

He stepped forward and reached out his left
hand, but Balear recoiled as though from a poisonous snake. “Stay
away from me!” Wild-eyed, the sergeant located a small rock sitting
atop Iren’s nearby dresser. He threw it, and Iren winced as it
struck the floor just short of his foot.

When the stone clattered to a stop, Iren’s
grin was gone. Numbly, he picked up and dusted off the pebble,
cradling it like an infant. Setting it gently on the windowsill
behind him, he turned his back on Balear and said no more.

He’d hoped it would be enough for the
thick-headed sergeant to get his meaning, but apparently Balear was
too stupid for that. Behind him, the soldier barked, “Hurry and
make yourself decent, or as decent as a freak like you can get.
That order comes from Captain Angustion himself. The king’s ordered
a celebration tonight to honor the captain’s successes against the
Quodivar. All castle residents must attend, and while I can’t begin
to understand why, the captain says that includes you. Make sure
you come.”

Iren scoffed, responding without turning
around, “Why would I do that? All Amroth wants to do is prance
around and recount his, no doubt, single-handed victory.”

Balear stiffened. “How dare you insult
Captain Angustion! Our gracious captain extends you a personal
invitation, something you cannot possibly deserve, yet you haven’t
the slightest humility at his offering. You foul, disgusting, Left
cur!”

With that, Balear stormed from the room,
slamming the door behind him. Its harsh ring, and the harsher ring
of “cur,” echoed mockingly off the stone walls for what felt like
an eternity afterward. Iren folded his arms on the windowsill. It
was bad enough King Azuluu forced him to live up here without
straw-haired bigots bothering him. With a deep breath, he vainly
attempted to wipe the encounter from his mind.

The scenery admittedly helped. Haldessa
Castle and its surrounding city were built on a bluff overlooking
the ocean, and Iren never tired of the salty smell or the way the
sun sparkled on the water. He wished he could swim in it, just
once, but he wasn’t permitted outside the castle walls.

With a sigh, Iren pulled himself back into
his room. He considered his unparalleled view atop the Tower of
Divinion one of his life’s few pleasures, but today it just
depressed him. His tiny chamber felt increasingly like a cage. He
could see the incredible landscape of Lodia, the rolling farm
fields dotted with villages and wooded thickets, but he couldn’t
touch it.

More than anyone else, Balear always
reminded him of that fact. Iren clenched his fists. In so many
ways, they were the same. They were almost the same height, just
under six feet, and had similar muscled builds.

“
Even in age,” he muttered.
At twenty, Balear had just two years on Iren.

Despite their outward similarities, however,
he and the sergeant differed in one way, the one that mattered
most. Because of that difference, the right-handed Balear had
achieved everything Iren desired and yet would never accomplish.
Balear had joined the Castle Guard at fourteen. He’d battled the
Quodivar and killed dozens of them without ever suffering more than
minor injuries. Everyone who served under him enjoyed his command.
Despite his young age, rumors already circulated that Balear would
replace Captain Angustion someday. Iren believed them. Even Amroth
openly considered the young man his protégé.

By contrast, Iren had never once fought in a
battle, a tournament, or indeed done anything noteworthy at all.
When he’d asked Amroth to join the Castle Guard at fourteen, the
captain had just laughed and told him to go away.

Seeking a distraction, Iren grabbed his
stolen mop from a corner and began cleaning up the water spilled by
Balear’s intrusion. As he swept, shouting from the window caught
his attention. He recognized the voice immediately. One of the
Castle Guard drill instructors was holding a practice session.

Iren’s grip tightened on the wooden handle.
Facing the window, he held the mop before him like a sword. As the
officer bellowed commands, Iren followed through with each of them,
swinging the mop with increasing speed and power. Beads of sweat
formed on his temples, but he ignored them. While he practiced, he
didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to think about the soldiers in
the courtyard below developing a lifelong camaraderie that would
never include him. He didn’t have to recall the angry eyes of every
man in the company the first and only time he’d tried to join them
for practice. He could forget their jeers as the instructor chased
him away at the point of a sword.

When the session ended, however, all those
thoughts came flooding to him at once. Slamming the mop on the
floor, Iren shouted, “It’s not fair! Everyone else in the whole
kingdom is right-handed. Why am I the only Left?” Grasping the rock
Balear had thrown at him, Iren whipped around and launched it, not
bothering to aim or even care what he hit.

In truth, he could damage little. His
chamber had little adornment: a hard bed with three discarded
blankets and a dresser with the few outfits he’d fished from the
trash. The only object of merit was a large painting hung on the
wall beside the dresser. As if guided by fate, the rock struck its
frame, and the artwork clattered to the floor.

The harsh sound yanked Iren from his temper.
He knelt and retrieved both the stone and the fallen painting. They
were his finest treasures. The stone, little more than a black
pebble, had come from the ocean. The surf had tossed it until it
had worn perfectly smooth. Years ago, one of the castle children
had brought it home, but his mother had commanded him to get rid of
it. Iren swiped it that night, his only possession that had ever
touched the sea.

As for the painting, while he couldn’t truly
claim to own it, he still considered it his. It had hung in this
tower since long before he arrived, yet it apparently held such low
value that no one bothered to remove it when he took up residence.
Still, he couldn’t help feeling a deep attachment to it, the only
thing in his room he hadn’t stolen or pulled from the garbage.

Iren surveyed it closely. “No harm done,” he
whispered with relief.

Returning the painting to the wall, Iren
stepped back and took in its splendid image: a serpentine dragon.
Though unsigned, the painting’s remarkable realism made the great
beast almost come alive. Blue streaks and hairs off its spine
accentuated its gleaming white body. Its wings stretched beyond the
painting’s borders, so that they appeared to extend forever to the
heavens. Though its mouth opened wide in a silent roar, its
expression invoked not terror but majesty.

The painting’s frame held a small plaque
that read, “Divinion, the Holy Dragon.” Iren smiled, proud of his
unshared knowledge. It gave him a small satisfaction, knowing
something the vast majority of the populace did not. Though
everyone called Haldessa’s tallest spire the Tower of Divinion, few
understood the name’s origin. Growing up, Iren overheard mothers
tell their children that long ago, the tower served as a temple to
worship dragons, sacred creatures that brought balance to the
world.

Of course, no one used it for that purpose
now. Nobody believed in the dragons anymore. Most had forgotten
that they even had names, let alone what those names were.

As Iren looked at the dragon’s face in the
artwork, though, for a moment he saw more than a painting. The
creature stared out at the room with sky blue eyes, eyes that
eerily matched Iren’s. Their gaze bored through his body, and a
sudden hopelessness washed over him. Barely conscious of his
actions, Iren backed away from the painting and collapsed on his
bed, burying his head in his hands.

What exactly made Iren get off his bed an
hour later, wipe his face, and attend Amroth’s feast after all,
even he didn’t know. Perhaps he longed to escape the dragon’s
probing look. Or perhaps he simply realized that, should he not
attend, he likely wouldn’t eat until at least the following
morning. Reluctantly, he left his room and plodded down the steps
of the Tower of Divinion, emerging into the long shadows of the
castle courtyard.

Much to his pleasure, Iren found the area
mostly deserted. Pairs of guards still lined each doorway except,
Iren noted with distaste, the one to the Tower of Divinion. A group
of five young women, dressed in gowns for the evening’s
festivities, chatted and giggled excitedly. Iren rolled his eyes at
the noise; no doubt each girl hoped that her dolled-up looks would
impress the great Amroth, well known as Lodia’s most eligible
bachelor.

The moment Iren began walking across the
courtyard, the girls stopped talking and stared at him with cold,
empty eyes. Most everyone in the castle looked at him that way,
with eyes that saw past him, a thing so contemptuous the senses
rejected it.

Doing his best to ignore the women, Iren
headed for an archway at the northern end of the courtyard. The
guards there glared at him, but they said nothing as he approached.
Their lack of response barely fazed him; few people ever opened
their mouths around him. Passing them without a second glance, Iren
walked down a long stone corridor lined with torches. Gradually, he
began smelling the sweet odors of fresh water, perfumes, and soaps,
signaling that he’d almost arrived at his destination.

At last the passage split in two, with a
pair of guards blocking the left path. For a moment Iren stood at
the intersection, debating. He could hear vociferous calls from
both directions. Initially he turned to the left, but when the
soldiers drew their swords, he backed down and went to the
right.

“
The one place in this
stupid castle they’ll actually stop me from entering,” he
grumbled.

After a short walk, the new passage opened
up, revealing one of Haldessa Castle’s most spectacular features:
its baths. At over a hundred feet square and thirty feet high, only
the grand hall surpassed them in size. Thick stone columns
supported the ceiling, and seafoam green Tacumsahen tiles covered
every surface. The light reflecting off them from the numerous
torches gave the space a warm, ethereal glow.

Iren followed the outer border of the room.
It was an open space wide enough for two men to walk abreast with
the chamber wall on one side and an interconnected series of
seven-foot high wooden changing closets on the other. To Iren’s
delight, most had their doors shut, indicating they were in use.
Better still, he could hear splashing in the pool. Evidently, he
wasn’t the only one planning a bath before the feast.

After walking nearly halfway around the
room, he found an unoccupied changing station and stepped inside.
The closet had just enough space for one person, but it had a door
on two sides. One, which Iren had entered, faced the chamber’s
outer wall, while the other faced inward toward the pool. A stout
wooden shelf about two feet off the ground provided a place to sit,
as well as a spot to house a stack of white linens.

Undressing, Iren stifled a chuckle. He never
tired of what came next. Grabbing a towel and washcloth from the
pile, he slammed open the door facing the pool and paraded forward,
grinning broadly. At the noise, several faces turned and initially
disregarded him as just another bather, albeit a noisy one. A few
seconds later, their heads snapped in a double take as they
realized that bather’s identity. Shouts filled the bath, and the
furious splashing of water as everyone rushed for the edge only
added to the din. In less than five minutes, the uproar ceased. The
chamber had emptied completely.

Sliding into the water, Iren laughed. “How
lucky I am!” he shouted, a little louder than he’d intended.
“Nobody else gets to bathe in private!”

Iren neither knew nor cared how long he
bathed. As long as he stayed, nobody else would dare enter the
chamber. Whenever he came here, he typically stayed for hours,
gleefully noting that all the while he forced dozens of other boys
and men in the castle to go on smelling awfully.

As he relaxed, he couldn’t help but admit a
grudging admiration for the people who’d constructed the baths. To
heat the water, the engineers had excavated a basement chamber that
passed beneath both this bath and the women’s adjacent to it.
Inside that room, fires burned constantly. The basement’s location
as a heat source proved ideal. Not only did it make for tepid
water, but it also gave the tile floor a warm touch. Even on the
coldest winter nights, one could always thaw out here.

At the pool’s far end, just below the water
line, Iren spied the chamber’s water source: a heavy metal gate,
linked by thick chains to pulley systems on either side of the
room. The gate separated the pool from a long canal that connected
to the clear waters of the Ute River, which flowed past the
northern side of the castle and cascaded in a magnificent waterfall
to the sea. A second gate linked the pool to another canal that
allowed used water to exit. When the baths needed changing, castle
workers opened the second gate to drain the pool, then closed it
and opened the first, letting fresh water flow in. The staff obeyed
a rigorous schedule in replacing the water, changing it daily
precisely when the sun reached its highest point.